23/05/07

This photograph of my TV depicts Yul Brynner kissing Blythe Danner with his EYES WIDE OPEN in a dream sequence in Futureworld (1976). Creepy! Even creepier is that this open-eyed kiss is the final shot of Yul Brynner's final film performance.

Futureworld is the Crichton-free sequel to Michael Crichton's classic first film, Westworld (1973). In both films, Yul Brynner plays The Gunslinger, an amok-running theme-park robot that is also a high parody of Brynner's "Chris Adams" character in The Magnificent Seven (1960). Whereas Brynner's character had major screen time in Westworld, his appearance in Futureworld is disappointingly limited to a four-minute dream-sequence cameo.

That shot of Brynner mechanically kissing Blythe Danner with his eyes wide open reminds me of the creepy red-eyed Zoltar machine in Big (1988). In Big, the Zoltar machine's mouth opens and closes rhythmically and soullessly, as if kissing an invisible Blythe Danner.

And Brynner's film-farewell kiss and the Zoltar machine both remind me (like so much stuff reminds me) of Donald Sutherland's "Matthew Bennell" character in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).

22/05/07

...not traditionally a big B-DAY dude, but with my birthday fast-approaching i thought i would polygonally lasso together my kindred birthday spirits for a special convocation! hey, there's bad people [Kissinger], there's good people [Vincent Price], and then there's MY, May 27th, PEOPLE!!! key forthcoming?